Posts by William Doohan

Free Burgers!

If I hadn't already given all my banking info to a good hearted, god fearing woman from Nigeria who promised me part of her cocoa fortune, then i would gladly pay you Tuesday, for the hamburger i eat today.

I need your clothes your boots and your helicopter

Yes, soon the 'boffins' (god I hate that word) will teach these autonomous vehicles to fly around on there own, then give them guns and bombs so they can be used as UCAV's, and then..... let the human hunting begin! [...beep...exterminate the inferior biologicals ....beep... exterminate! exterminate! ]

Incoming!

@ anonymous coward - Plenty of us Americans wanted to nuke those fuckers after 9/11. I was driving down the highway past a construction site a few weeks later and they had hung out a big banner that said "Drop the Bomb Pres!" .. seriously though, it would have been overkill. Plus, the Chinese might not have like that big plume of fallout headed their way. AND, the Russians might not have been too thrilled at tracking 20 or 50 incoming SLBM's from the Indian ocean.

Whaaaa?

E-voting is a scam

'Electronic' Voting has always been a scam. Why is it that people are so easily fooled into believing that the newest, shiniest machine or gadget is always the best? While paper ballots can be faked, stuffed, etc. , they can also be re-counted and checked for accuracy. Also, there is nothing in the U.S. or New Jersey constitution that says that the votes have to be tabulated in one day or even in one month. Are we all so addicted to 'instantaneous' results that we can't wait to find out who the next politician/criminal to hold the office is going to be?

And it's WAY to easy fake the vote totals on these machines. It's already happened in an election fraud down in.....you guessed it...Florida! (No, not the Bush election, one before that actually)

Bah, I'm disgusted with the whole process.

(Evil Bill, 'cause he represents the 'computers as the answer to everything' school of thought.)

Mil-sats

It's been my belief for many years that anything the US military or government tells people that they are 'researching' or 'looking into' they already have had for the last ten years or so. So, don your tinfoil hats everyone! That nanosat is going over your head....... NOW!

Cybermen? Cyberbrains?

The original news story said that Japanese robots were doing the work of 3.5 million people. No mention of 'cyberization', cybermen, cyberbrains, ghosts in any kind of shells, Gundams, undying robotoids, cyberjaps, terminators, John Connor or even Satanic Renaults. ..... Wait a minute.... Is that a ratbrain controlled B-2 flying overhead? Nah, just another....ARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!

Robot sex will protect us

RE: $250 is a bit low, but....

Why bother to build a large expensive RC plane that can carry explosives when it would be much easier to use a smaller one with ... a web enabled camera, a wireless internet connection, GPS etc. etc. ... and a spraying device to deliver ... anthrax spores or one of dozens of other disease carying organisms.... to a large metropolitan area?

Never mind chain saw and machine gun carrying Terminators, simple RC planes and bioweapons could kill 10's of thousands of innocent people in a coordinated attack.

On another note, I DO think we still need to fear a.i. . Whenever I hear engineers laugh at that idea, I always think of the first terminator movie where Sarah Connor says to Kyle Reese, the soldier form the future, "You can't fool me Reese, they can't make things like that." And he says "No, not yet. Not for about another 40 years". ....... Even the possibility of it happening should give those who toy with autonomous robots pause. Maybe we DO need a Butlerian Jihad ......

(For those who don't know, in the DUNE books by Frank Herbert, an ancient war which was fought to eradicate intelligent machines is alluded to.)

{also, i don't have an English pounds sign on my 'puter, hence the title}

@S. Grundy

We already have ID's in the US. Your driver's license. And the Congress has already passed a law that mandates that all driver's license's in all the states are made compatible by... 2010 (?) [not sure of the exact date]

Danny Strickland got it right

Dan you got it right. It looks like the Myasishchev M-50 'Bounder', a supposedly nuclear powered bomber that alarmed the US Air Force into working on one themselves. But as the US Navy Admirals said to them at the time, "We'll have a submarine in the sky before you guys have a bomber in the ocean"